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Additional Credits

The exhibition was curated by Howard Spector, Los Angeles, CA

Video

Photographer Statement

When humanity is betrayed by madness, war often follows. This project has been about my reconciliation of man’s need for war and the inadvertent upheaval imposed on the women who are directly affected by it. The slow-burning post-war truth that I have learned, is that in the end, war shows up men’s weaknesses and women’s strengths. Natural caretakers, women pick up the pieces, turning broken lives into replanted gardens.The bridge of anguish is crossed innumerable times from both sides, yet the perspective is always different because of gender roles, cultures and historical context.
Death doesn’t chose sides, but choosing life after war is quite another matter. A number of the women I have met around the world gained impossible strength from their heartache and losses and turned their gaze towards activism, advocating for social justice, peace and teaching tolerance. Their process was not always immediate or easy but came to them slowly as they faced post-war hardship, and healed physical and psychological wounds.
The women who I have chosen to feature here include activists and the unknown, reflecting the spectrum of women who embody ferocious spirits and quiet strength. Each in their own way chose life and made an indelible impression on me.

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The topic of women and war has taken photographer Marissa Roth to numerous countries over a span of 29 years. It began in 1984 in the former Yugoslavia, home of her Jewish grandparents, murdered by Hungarian Fascists in 1942, and a 1988 Los Angeles Times photo assignment about the plight of Afghan women refugees. After photographing women war refugees in Albania in 1999, she realized that the focus of the immediate and permanent effects of war on women was a recurring theme in her work, and she chose then to formalize it into a project. The resulting exhibition features photographs and stories of the women portrayed and how the war irrevocably altered their lives.

“This project brought me face to face with hundreds of women who endured and survived war and its ancillary experiences of loss, pain and unimaginable hardship. I was compelled to put faces and give voices to the women’s side of war. There is no sign of blood or guns in any of the images, just the record of lives lived with a never-ending post-war backdrop.”

The topic of women and war has taken photographer Marissa Roth to numerous countries over a span of 29 years. It began in 1984 in the former Yugoslavia, home of her Jewish grandparents, murdered by Hungarian Fascists in 1942, and a 1988 Los Angeles Times photo assignment about the plight of Afghan women refugees. After photographing women war refugees in Albania in 1999, she realized that the focus of the immediate and permanent effects of war on women was a recurring theme in her work, and she chose then to formalize it into a project. The resulting exhibition features photographs and stories of the women portrayed and how the war irrevocably altered their lives.

“This project brought me face to face with hundreds of women who endured and survived war and its ancillary experiences of loss, pain and unimaginable hardship. I was compelled to put faces and give voices to the women’s side of war. There is no sign of blood or guns in any of the images, just the record of lives lived with a never-ending post-war backdrop.”

When humanity is betrayed by madness, war often follows. This project has been about my reconciliation of man’s need for war and the inadvertent upheaval imposed on the women who are directly affected by it. The slow-burning post-war truth that I have learned, is that in the end, war shows up men’s weaknesses and women’s strengths. Natural caretakers, women pick up the pieces, turning broken lives into replanted gardens.The bridge of anguish is crossed innumerable times from both sides, yet the perspective is always different because of gender roles, cultures and historical context.
Death doesn’t chose sides, but choosing life after war is quite another matter. A number of the women I have met around the world gained impossible strength from their heartache and losses and turned their gaze towards activism, advocating for social justice, peace and teaching tolerance. Their process was not always immediate or easy but came to them slowly as they faced post-war hardship, and healed physical and psychological wounds.
The women who I have chosen to feature here include activists and the unknown, reflecting the spectrum of women who embody ferocious spirits and quiet strength. Each in their own way chose life and made an indelible impression on me.

Six Hiroshima A-Bomb Survivors
Hiroshima, Japan 2002
Mutsumien, a home for hibakusha, or A-Bomb survivors, opened in 1960. When this photograph was taken, 100 survivors lived there. The oldest woman was 97 and the youngest was 70. There were 80 women and 20 men. Many women who were burned very badly, or had other health-related problems, could not marry, so they had to live alone. Consequently, there were more women in the facility. Men could marry and have families to care for them.

Setsuko Iwamoto, Hiroshima A-Bomb Survivor
Hiroshima, Japan 2002
Setsuko Iwamoto survived the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. On the morning the bomb came down, she was a teenager in school and ran to one of Hiroshima’s rivers, along with thousands of other people, to wash her face and cool off, and to feel if she still had a face. She was burned on her arms and back, but not on her face.

Hatsuko Suzuki, Japanese Eternal War Widow
Kamakura, Japan 2002
Hatsuko Suzuki’s husband was a soldier fighting in the war. He was killed in May, 1945. At that time in Japan, it was considered a dishonor to remarry if one’s husband died while serving the country. She never did.

Alice McNally, Catholic Mother of 11
North Belfast, Northern Ireland 2006
Alice McNally, 45, is a Catholic mother of 11 children, who lost five of them at a young age. She has lived in North Belfast her whole life. This area of the city has seen some of the worst violence; known as an interface, it straddles both Catholic and Protestant communities and continues to sustain sectarian strife.

Mina Wardle, a Protestant Who Started a Women’s Trauma Center
Belfast, Northern Ireland 2006
Mina Wardle, a Protestant woman, started the Shankill Stress and Trauma Group in Belfast, in 1969, as a community center in response to “The Troubles” to help local women cope with their losses and the sectarian violence.
“It’s an amazing journey we all went on �" we never bought a ticket �" didn’t know who was driving the train, plane, cars �" vehicles always changed. The individual price was so expensive. This center is about turning negatives into positives. That’s the most important thing. I was carrying a child when it all started. We have to acknowledge the
past �" but live and share the future.”

Sabrie Krasniqi, Wounded Kosovar-Albanian Refugee
Tirana, Albania 1999
Sabrie Krasniqi, 26, was photographed on May 31, 1999, at a hospital in Tirana. She was from Peja, Kosovo, and fled after being severely burned by Serb military members who raided her home.
“The Serbian soldiers poured a samovar of boiling hot water over me, after they invaded my village. We lived in seven or eight houses near each other of my extended family. When the Serbs got there they were angry because they saw there were no men. They wanted something to hurt, so they attacked some of the children and some of the women. I don’t know where my family is.”

Doan Ngoc Tram Places an Incense by a Shrine to Her Daughter, a Doctor Killed During the American War.
Hanoi, Vietnam 2012
The oldest daughter of Doan Ngoc Tram, 87, was a doctor serving on the North Vietnamese frontline when she was killed on June 22, 1970, at the age of 28. Dang Thuy Tram had kept journals, which were found by an American serviceman after her death. He was ordered to burn them, but his translator said not to, so he hid them and then kept them for 35 years. He gave the originals to the University of Texas, and brought a photocopy when he went back to Vietnam in search of her family. He found her mother, and the journals were published in 2006 in 20 languages. The title, taken from a page in her journal, is Last Night I Dreamed of Peace.

Jody Davids, Mother of Marine Wesley Davids, Who Was Killed in Iraq
Dublin, Ohio 2005
In the summer of 2005, 23 Marine reservists from Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, based in Columbus, Ohio, lost their lives. Among the active duty and the reserve Marines who served in Iraq, Lima Company had the fourth highest casualties of any Marine Company in combat operations, but sustained the highest number of casualties of any Marine Reserve Company in the war, by 2008, the last year that the unit posted statistics. Jody Davids’ 26-year-old son, Wesley, died on May 11, 2005.

Sebanate Berisha and a Boy, Kosovar-Albanian Refugees
Tirana, Albania 1999
Sebanate Berisha, a Kosovar-Albanian refugee, was photographed at a makeshift refugee center with an unidentified boy. She and her sister lost all of their children �" seven between them�" in a nighttime bombing raid in Kosovo.

Two Generations Separated by a Genocide
Phnom Penh, Cambodia 2009
Sobon Ratha, seated near portraits of her great-grandparents taken before the war, lives with her parents and grandmother, Dy Ratha, who was considered privileged before Pol Pot came to power. Soon after the occupation of Phnom Penh, Dy Ratha’s husband was decapitated, her mother died from an untreated illness, and her father was killed. She eked out a living selling textiles to support her five young children. She is now an ardent political activist.

Remains of the Church Where the Women and Children Died
Oradour-sur-Glane, France 2013
On June 10, 1944, 452 women and children perished in the Oradour Church during the massacre and fire. Though the stone floor and walls remain, very few artifacts from inside the church survived.